Best 292 quotes in «tennis quotes» category

The two dozen commonplace childhood photographs - snowsuit, pony, tennis racket, looming fender of a Dodge - were an inexhaustible source of wonder for him, at her having existed before he met her, and of sadness for his possessing nothing of the ten million minutes of that black-and-white scallop-edged existence save these few proofs.

They call him the Streak, he likes to turn the other cheek. He's always making the news, wearing just his tennis shoes.

Throughout my career, my mind rarely wandered, and I was never sidetracked by distractions, no matter what I was going through off the court.

To be a tennis champion, you have to be inflexible. You have to be stubborn. You have to be arrogant. You have to be selfish and self-absorbed. Kind of tunnel vision almost.

To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.

Training the body to obey the mind as I have done differs from the more conventional method of getting the mind to obey the body.

Try throwing a ball just once for a dog. It would be like eating only one peanut or potato chip. Try to ignore the importuning of a Golden Retriever who has brought you his tennis ball, the greatest treasure he possesses!

Umpires are like emotional girlfriends, once they make up their minds, there is no point in arguing

Unbelievable, yet, what else could it be?

Usually, I wear tennis shoes because my feet are flat, and it hurts to wear anything other than shoes that are cushiony.

We all choke. Winners know how to handle choking better than losers.

Well, my mum's been a tennis coach - she coached me till I was 12.

We need to remember that we can't compete endlessly with other nations that set their income taxes substantially lower than ours. They will attract jobs, and investment. They may generate more tax - and they may even persuade their tennis champs to run that extra half yard

We're following the evolution of tennis. On the women's side, there has been a very positive change, with the arrival of many new stars.

We've been training and playing full-time since we were 18 and 19. So after tennis, we'll be excited to see what it's like to have more free time.

What rivalry? I win all the matches.

When I committed to playing a little tennis in some exhibitions, it was the best thing for me. It got me in shape. It got me out of the house. It got me doing something I love to do.

When I lost a tennis match that made me upset or hurt emotionally I would find myself going to the piano and playing for hours. It was my place of refuge and solace.

When I'm in L.A., I try to run the canyons or play tennis with friends a few times a week. I've tried working out with a trainer and going to the gym, but I'd just much rather be outside.

When I'm playing my best, like I was at the U.S. Open, I feel on top of the match and able to do exactly what I want. There are other times when you're not in control, but that is tennis and you have momentum changes in every single match.

When I need to relax, I love to go to the movies or watch a good TV series. I also practice a lot of sport, mostly tennis and swimming.

When I play, I feel like in a theatre, why should I look ugly then, because I'm a tennis player?

When I walk through that gate to the court, that's my escape. I block out everything, good and bad.

When you do something best in life, you don't really want to give that up - and for me it's tennis.

When you start from nothing, when you come from nothing, it makes you hungry. I am proud of where I came from and I know what I want. I want to win.

while it's true in tennis, love is zero. but zero is also where everything starts. nothing would ever be born if we didn't depart from there. nothing would be ever achieved.

Why did I lose? No reason, though you might like to know that I got tired, my ears started popping, the rubber came off my shoes, I got cramp, and I lost one of my contact lenses. Other than that I was in great shape.

Why I love chess and tennis - the volleying aspect, and the fact that your competitors' reactions and motivations and bluffs come into the game itself.

Why has slamming a ball with a racquet become so obsessive a pleasure for so many of us? It seems clear to me that a primary attraction of the sport is the opportunity it gives to release aggression physically without being arrested for felonious assault.

Wimbledon is getting a bit too like Royal Ascot. It's not what happens or who wins so much, as what clothes do I have on.

Wimbledon is the world's most boring tournament. There's hardly anything to do apart from tennis. You constantly find yourself yawning - there's no entertainment here.

Wimbledon attracted Bill Clinton to the gallery at Centre Court Tuesday at the All England Club. NBC cameras showed his head turning back and forth with each volley. Even at a tennis match, it looks like he's denying everything.

Winning is a way of expressing yourself.

Working with Brando was fun. It was like a tennis match. We played unbelievably well together.

Wrestling was my first success, the first thing that confirmed that I could be good at anything. Devoting yourself to wrestling, or tennis, or skiing, or dance, or to a musical instrument is a longing to be disciplined for a purpose.

Yeah, I think there are many other important things in life, not just tennis.

You are always talking about yourself and tennis and how you are feeling. I try to avoid it when I don't have to.

You can't be considered a great player unless you win Wimbledon. That's the way it is.

You'd have to think that if he'd been around today, Rod Laver would have been Rod Laver.

You did the best you could," and she seemed to believe I had. I said, "I've just been going through the motions," using the expression my father had after he'd watched my first tennis lesson. "Sweetie," she said, "that's what a lot of life is.

You don't think about anything because you just try to playevery game, every point. If you get some chance, you try to take this chance.

You have to believe on the court. In the end, it's mental. In these moments against a great champion like Rafa, you have to believe. It's all about stepping in and taking your chances. I always believed, but it's a process of learning.

You know growing up in Sweden meant we had a lot of rain when we played tennis. We were taught on clay courts but because of the weather, we had to go indoors a lot.

You know why I want to win? Because of 15,000 reasons inside of the tennis court.

You'll hear a lot of applause in your life, but none will mean more to you than that applause from your peers. I hope each of you hears that at the end.

You've got to get to the stage in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing.

Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer Moments. These are times, watching the young Swiss at play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re OK.

And then also, again, still, what are those boundaries, if they’re not baselines, that contain and direct its infinite expansion inward, that make tennis like chess on the run, beautiful and infinitely dense? The true opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. Always and only the self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out terms. The competing boy on the net’s other side: he is not the foe: he is more the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word excuse or occasion for meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis’s beauty’s infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise… You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again…Mario thinks hard again. He’s trying to think of how to articulate something like: But then is battling and vanquishing the self the same as destroying yourself? Is that like saying life is pro-death? … And then but so what’s the difference between tennis and suicide, life and death, the game and its own end?

Archie Henderson has won no awards, written no books and never played any representative sport. He was an under-11 tournament-winning tennis player as a boy, but left the game when he discovered rugby where he was one of the worst flyhalves he can remember. This did not prevent him from having opinions on most things in sport. His moment of glory came in 1970 when he predicted—correctly as it turned out—that Griquas would beat the Blue Bulls (then still the meekly named Noord-Transvaal) in the Currie Cup final. It is something for which he has never been forgiven by the powers-that-be at Loftus. Archie has played cricket in South Africa and India and gave the bowling term military medium a new and more pacifist interpretation. His greatest ambition was to score a century on Llandudno beach before the tide came in.

But every step of Williams’s career has been shadowed with the sort of resentment that emerges whenever someone unsettles the status quo in an effective and unapologetic way. Put differently, when she stirred the pot, a whole lot of bullshit rose to the surface – and her refusal to try to perfume its smell has made her unruliness all the more potent.